July 2, 2013

Mansplainer

A Facebook friend recently took Texas governor Rick Perry to task for having an opinion about abortion rights. To support her vituperation, she referred to an article in The Atlantic that was titled, “Rick Perry – Mansplainer-in-Chief.” This friend and several others yukked it up about Perry in specific and conservative men in general. When I opened the article, I learned that the term mansplainer “applied to any situation in which men believe they are the experts and drone on and on about something on which the women being lectured are the actual experts.”

To provide some balance to my Facebook friend’s commenters, mostly women, I suggested that Rick Perry pontificating on abortion was like Hillary Clinton pontificating on fighting a war, something I have no objection to her doing.

Surprisingly, not a single commenter chose to point out a flaw in my logic.